Mr and Mrs Blue Hair

I know that I've been claiming for some time that I'm fifty years old, but I've been working on the Chinese principle that a person's true age should be calculated from the day (or night) of their conception. But I am now, occidentally speaking, fifty. If forty is a dangerous age, then fifty has got to be, well, far more dangerous.

People retire at fifty these days. We've all seen the pension advertisements featuring that smugly smiling blue-haired couple striding across the golf course, or taking tea in the garden, their gleaming dentures about to bite into a home-baked scone.

We sometimes see Mr and Mrs Blue Hair sailing their dinghy on what looks like an estuary in Essex. Curiously, although the sail of the dinghy is full of wind, the couple's hair remains helmet-like – not a single blue hair is ever out of place. I feel sorry for Mr and Mrs Blue Hair. Not only are they condemned to using a full can of hair spray before they go sailing, they are also fated to live lives of full-time leisure. Leisure with a capital L.

Judging from the advertisements, their average day begins with breakfast in a hotel room. Mrs Blue Hair, elegant in a lace-trimmed negligée, Mr in silk dressing gown. Through the window can be seen the immaculate fairways of the hotel golf course, on which they will soon be tramping with the golfing equipment bought with the pension plan.

Lunchtime sees them sitting in the garden of a country pub (thatched) sipping their horrible alcohol-free drinks. The early afternoon is taken up with the aforementioned dinghy sailing. By tea time they are antiques-hunting in a Cotswold village. One of them, usually Mrs Blue Hair, is holding up a hideous artefact for the approval of the other. By early evening they are back in the hotel, dressing for dinner. Mr Blue Hair is fastening the clasp on Mrs Blue Hair's necklace. Sometimes their hands are touching.

Does Mrs Blue Hair fear that Mr Blue Hair will take his hands from the necklace and place them around her neck and strangle her? Perhaps with the cry, ‘I cannot stand the thought of spending another minute of leisure with you!’ No, of course not. Because there they are, in the hotel restaurant, clinking their long-stemmed glasses together and congratulating each other on their foresight in arranging such a generous pension plan. Even later we see them dancing decorously together, Mr Blue Hair keeping his distance from his wife, unlike many men of his age who have drunk too much and go in for a bit of pelvic thrusting on the dance floor.

And off to bed we presume. But we never actually see them in bed. Sex is a leisure activity Mr and Mrs Blue Hair don't appear to indulge in. Presumably because sex is still free (it would be difficult to privatize), and even impecunious people without pension plans are still able to indulge themselves in this pleasurable leisure-time activity. No expensive equipment is needed, unless your tastes are very specialized, and the wearing of clothing is positively discouraged, again unless…

We do know that Mr and Mrs Blue Hair had a sexual relationship in the past, because we occasionally see them visiting the grandchildren. Though really the grandchildren are an excuse; what the Blue Hairs are doing is showing off again. What they truly want us to see is their new saloon car, and their swanky matching luggage (the car boot is open), bought and paid for by the pension plan.

What we never see is the Blue Hairs bickering over whose turn it is to empty the stinking pedal-bin. We certainly don't see them arguing over the remote control, or complaining that the grandchildren have lost the tiny key to Mrs Blue Hair's vanity case at some time during their visit.

We are not allowed to think that retirement at fifty is anything less than leisure-filled heaven. In the world inhabited by the Blue Hairs, the best things in life are not free. They are bought in shops. Sometimes I see a wistful expression on Mr Blue Hair's face. I think he misses his workplace and his former colleagues.

And Mrs Blue Hair, she's not a happy woman, she wants her old life back, the one she had before he retired. A little light charity work in the morning. A library book and Oprah Winfrey in the afternoon.

Mrs Blue Hair is tired of golf and hotels and country pubs and dinghies, and dancing to the hotel quintet. She wants to slob out and relax and let her blue hair blow in the wind. And so do I.